Mountain Justice Blacksburg

The third and final Wise Energy Forum will be held this Thursday, 11/19 at 6pm in the Goodloe Center on the campus of Mountain Empire Community College in Big Stone Gap Virginia.

At the second Forum, we focused in on the nuts and bolts of community-owned renewable energy.  *This Thursday, we’ll broaden our focus and talk about next steps for facilitating economic diversity in the area.  A conversation starter featuring video from the first forum will help frame the evenings discussion.

The important work from the Forums is getting out into cyberspace and the airwaves!  Appalshop Radio (wmmt)  is currently broadcasting audio clips from the second forum, and more information and clips from the first Forum up on their website, just click here!
Also, our guests from the second Forum, the Appalachian Institute for Renewable Energy, now has a page on their website for the with resources and photos. Click here to check it out!

The last two forums were great, and we need YOU to make the third and final forum even better.  The Wise Energy Forums are tackling the hard questions of how we diversify our economy and bring good, clean jobs to our area.  All
are welcome, bring a friend!

Mountain Justice Blacksburg will be hosting the Mountain Top Removal Roadshow, this Thursday at 7 pm in Squires 238. Please come out to support the growing resistance to MTR coal mining, and learn more about the issue at hand.

The Mountaintop Removal Road Show includes a stunning slide show about the impacts of mountaintop removal on coalfield residents, communities and the environment, and features traditional Appalachian mountain music and shocking aerial photos of decapitated Appalachian mountains.

The Mountaintop Removal Road Show has been shown over 600 times in 22 states since 2003 – including over 200 large and small universities such as Duke University, Middlebury College, and Iowa State University, plus many church, community and civic organizations.

9 pm, the usual spot (couches on the bottom floor of Squires, near the Black cultural center)

Agenda items include:

report back on treasurer workshop from Chrissy
room reservations
MTR roadshow
pie auction
MJ Fall Student Summit
anything else???

Please come if you can!

A special preview of the film *Coal Country* will be shown on Thursday, September 10, at 7:50 p.m. at the Lyric Theater in Blacksburg. The film tells the dramatic story of the struggles of Appalachian communities against mountain top removal mining. A concert by Diana Jones, who performs in the movie’s soundtrack, will start at 7 p.m. The event is free with a recommended $10 donation to the sponsors, the Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards and the Sierra Club’s programs against mountain top removal.

Special Preview: *COAL COUNTRY*
*A film by Mari-Lynn Evans and Phylis Geller*
www.coalcountrythemovie.com

Coal Country, the new film from Evening Star Productions tells the story of the dramatic struggle happening in central Appalachia communities around mountain-top removal coal-mining. In these communities, miners and residents are locked in conflict: is mining and processing coal essential to providing good jobs, or is it destroying the land, water and air?

Passions are running high in the mountains of Appalachia. Families and communities are deeply split over what is being done to their land. At issue is the latest form of strip mining called “mountaintop removal”, or MTR. Coal companies blast the tops off mountains, and dump the debris, or “overburden” into valleys and streams. They then mine the exposed seams of coal and transport it to processing plants. Coal is mined more cheaply than ever with less manpower needed while an ancient mountain range is disappearing forever.

A sneak peak of the film, which will air nationally in November, will be offered in Virginia on Thursday, September 10th at The Lyric Theatre located at 135 College Avenue in Blacksburg. Singer and songwriter Diana Jones (www.dianajonesmusic.com), featured on the upcoming Coal Country soundtrack, will be performing at 7pm preceding the 7:50pm film showing. This is a free event for the public, with a suggested $10 contribution to the Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards and Virginia Sierra Club’s mountain-top removal advocacy campaigns. Signed, limited-edition prints of Virginian artist Wes Freed’s Coal Country painting will also be available for purchase.

This premiere event also includes a special appearance by Wise County resident Kathy Selvage whose story is featured in the film. Ms. Selvage’s father was a coal miner and a decades-long member of the UMWA. But when MTR began to tear her community apart, she could not remain silent. Listen first-hand to this coal miner’s daughter describe why she became a grass-roots organizer for the sake of her community’s future with deep respect for its past.

Coal is very far from the minds of most Americans, and this film will make you consider where the energy comes from to run the machinery of our daily lives. The movie was made to offer views from both sides of the issue to foster better ways to compromise, and take a look at coal mining with compassion, and respect.

Mountaintop removal coal mining has buried nearly 2000 miles of headwater streams with mining waste in Appalachia; demolished thousands of acres of hardwood forest; and flattened over 480 Appalachian mountain peaks.  And more permits have been approved.

Join us May 30 from 1 to 5 at the Lyric Theatre, located at  135 College Avenue in downtown Blacksburg for a double feature of documentary films on environmental justice:  Catherine Pancake’s Black Diamonds and David Novack’s Burning the Future.

Black Diamonds interweaves the story of citizens fighting mountaintop removal with the perspectives of government officials, activists, and scientists creating a “riveting portrait of … [a] region…caught between the grinding wheels of the national appetite for cheap energy and an enduring sense of Appalachian culture, pride, and natural beauty.”  The film includes music by the likes of Kentucky’s  Sarah Ogan Gunning and Roscoe Holcomb and North Carolina’s Ola Belle Reed, as well as contemporary artists such as Jack Rose and Susan Alcorn.

Burning the  Future focuses on a group of West Virginians fighting the despoiling of their land and the poisoning of their water and includes the story of Maria Gunnoe, a waitress turned eloquent activist for the mountains who won the 2009 Goldman Prize for North America, dubbed the “Nobel Prize for environmentalists.”

Tickets are $10 and all proceeds benefit  Concerned Citizens of Giles County, Mountain Justice Summer, Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards and Energy Justice Network, all small shoestring operations of all or mostly all volunteers.

And if you cannot attend you can still help sponsor the program ($10 for individuals and $20 for small businesses and non-profits.)  For more information contact Beth Wellington at beth@energyjustice.net.  You can view the facebook invite at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=99368830707